Toddler with Down syndrome learns words through music

One mom’s incredibly beautiful video of her daughter singing along with her son has gone viral after she explained how music helped her toddler with Down syndrome learn new words.

Utah mom Amanda Bowman Gray shared the clip of her 11-year-old daughter, Lydia, playing “You Are My Sunshine” on her guitar, with 25-month-old Bo chirping in with words along the way.

“My daughter Lydia was watching Bo while I was in the shower,” Gray captioned the Facebook post. “Came out to this. If she didn’t have a guitar I don’t know if she would know how to babysit him. This is her go to. It’s proof that music therapy works. Bo is 25 months old and has a 12 word vocabulary. Every word he has learned has been through music and singing.”

View photos

Viral Facebook video

Gray’s post has gone viral since it was uploaded a few days ago. The video has since been viewed 43 million times, with people around the world falling in love with the adorable duo.

For Gray and her husband, Caleb, who are both musicians, music therapy has played a huge part in their son’s development, after early health troubles saw him in the hospital to have heart surgery.

View photos

Amanda Bowman Gray and her husband, Caleb, are huge believers in the power of music to help their son. (Photo: Facebook/heberjonesy)

“What most people didn’t know is that my husband and I started practicing the song ‘You are my sunshine’ a month before he had his surgery because we were wanting to perform some tight harmonies at our gigs,” Gray revealed on Facebook.

“At night we would practice and sing this song while he was in my arms. It was very much routine before his surgery.”

She also noted that the first time Bo moved after his surgery was in reaction to the song. That was “the first time that he moved as he reacted to the familiarity of the song and our voices,” she wrote. “He was so heavily sedated and wouldn’t respond. From then on this has become his theme song. We are firm believers in music therapy!”